


One of These Days

by moovelope



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Angst, Gen, Leorio supporting his poor friend, Suicide mention, written before the manga returned from hiatus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-25 23:31:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12543724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moovelope/pseuds/moovelope
Summary: "There aren't many left, after this," Kurapika eventually said. One hand reached out to run gently against the glass. "These could be my mother's eyes, or my father's. I'll never know for sure."Leorio's stomach clenched into a tight knot.





	One of These Days

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you gotta write super angsty leopika

The ship of the fourth prince of Kakin was disgustingly large, overly complicated and had until recently been filled to the brim with bodyguards and pro Hunters. Leorio caught his breath as the last body dropped, knocked out cold by the sucker punch to the abdomen. He tied the man up, and left him with the rest as he took off down the hall. The other Zodiacs had checked in, nearly everyone was taken care of.

Leorio had lost track of Kurapika near the beginning of the invasion, but he had already expected the man to go running off on his own. Turning towards the nearest wall, Leorio punched the plaster, focusing his nen on the vibration it produced. He couldn’t expand his En to a large enough range to search for Kurapika, but he’d developed something similar, using the structure to bounce his Nen off of.

There were faint traces of a group of six on the far end of the ship, one portion of the Zodiacs. Not too far ahead there was a singular figure, sitting down in the middle of a room. Leorio took off quickly.

“Not like he could answer his radio or anything, oh no, I’m Kurapika and I can do everything by myself,” he muttered, shaking the tension out of his fist as he went. As he got closer he sent out his En (an impressive six meters if he did say so himself) and was able to recognize Kurapika’s signature Nen. He stopped outside of the room, glancing at the pool of blood slowly rolling out of the doorway.

Leorio took a slow, deep breath as he felt the fight drain out of him.

The lights were dimmed in the room, the only illumination coming from behind the tanks of water on the wall. All Leorio could see of Kurapika was his back, huddled in front of the display as he was. Leorio took care as he stepped over two (?) bodies strewn across the floor, mangled beyond recognition.  He winced as he stepped in the puddle of blood surrounding them.  
  
"It's me," he said, though he knew he'd already be dead if Kurapika hadn’t recognized his footfalls. He didn’t get too close; instead he fully focused on what the man in front of him was looking at.  
  
There was around a dozen containers the size of fishbowls, each with one bright red eye floating within it. Leorio swallowed, trying to quell the sudden nausea. From the corner of his eye he could see that Kurapika was shaking ever so slightly, blood from a gash on the man’s arm dripping every so often onto the floor.  
  
"Are the other guards dead?" Kurapika whispered, not looking up.  
  
"Yeah, they are. Are you—?"  
  
"I'm fine," Kurapika replied. Leorio beat down the scoff that crawled up his throat.  
  
"I don't think you know what fine means anymore," he said flatly.  Kurapika blinked and finally looked up at him, as if he just realized that Leorio was actually there.

"No, I don't suppose I do," Kurapika said.  His gaze quickly was drawn back to the wall of eyes in front of him. "Leorio, I don't know what I'm going to do,” he said softly.  
  
"Don’t know what you’re going to do when?" Leorio asked.  He kneeled down next to the chair, to both hear better and surreptitiously check Kurapika's wound out of the corner of his eye.  
  
Kurapika opened his mouth and then faltered, seemingly lost for words. Leorio couldn’t help but notice how thin the man had gotten when he was this close.  His blond hair was oily and straggled, his skin sallow. The only life left on his face was the glow of his eyes, reflecting off of glass in front of him.  
  
"There aren't many left, after this," Kurapika eventually said. One hand reached out to run gently against the glass. "These could be my mother's eyes, or my father's. I'll never know for sure."  
  
Leorio's stomach clenched into a tight knot.  
  
"Our eyes all look so similar, but.  I used to think I would just _know_ when I found them," he continued. His voice held no inflection, his hands had stopped wavering. "Maybe DNA testing…”

"Kurapika—"  
  
"I wouldn't want to do that, anyhow. Their memories have been disgraced enough as it is. I have the rest of the Kurta clan's eyes in a safe storage outside of York Shin. Once I have them all I—"  
  
Kurapika flinched inwards, and Leorio realized that _of course_ there would be more than one injury.  Leorio reached out, but his hands were batted away just as quickly.  Leorio grunted in annoyance.  
  
“We can collect their eyes and get them someplace safe, but I need to see what happened to your ribs so if you just let me—”  
  
“Would you come with me?”  
  
Leorio’s hands twisted in frustration. “To fix up your ribs? Of course? How else am I supposed to do anything about them?” he asked testily.  
  
“When I go and return their eyes to their graves.”  
  
There was a stunned silence, where Leorio's brain attempted to process the sentence.  His hands were frozen awkwardly in the air.  
  
“You want me to...?” He trailed off.  He felt a bit dizzy, still a bit nauseous, but now there was also a dull ache gripping him in the chest. He was used to that last one though, where Kurapika was concerned.  
  
Kurapika looked at him properly, not smiling, but appearing calmer than he was a second before. “I would appreciate it. I'd also appreciate it if you could take a look at my injuries before we leave.”  He took that opportunity to sway forward a bit.  Leorio grabbed him before he fell over completely.  
  
“You dramatic little- Alright I got you, let's lie you out right here,” he said adjusting the man onto the floor. Leorio tore a strip of cloth off of his shirt to staunch the bleeding on Kurapika’s one arm. He then unbuttoned Kurapika's shirt to assess the damage.  There was an incredible amount of bruising down his ribs, and another cut, deeper, on his side.  High enough to cut into his binder.  
  
"Jesus. You're not Gon, you can't take this kind of beating and walk away lightly you know," he grumbled, mostly to himself. Kurapika's eyes were unfocused, head tilted towards the tanks. "One of these days you're gonna get yourself killed," he said, voice catching a little bit.  He cleared his throat to cover it.  This was no place to be getting emotional.  
  
"Hmm, can't die," Kurapika hummed. Leorio barked out a soft laugh.  
  
"Is that why you throw your life on the line like that? Well surprise! You can die, case in point," Leorio's said, gesturing towards the injuries before him. He ran his hands down Kurapika's sides, using his Nen to sense the extent of the damage.  
  
"Not allowed to," Kurapika mumbled, "Then the chains will disappear," he added, wiggling his good hand. He then seemed to realize that the chains were no longer there, his Nen too weak to uphold the conjuration.  Leorio sighed.  
  
"The only thing keeping you alive is so you can stick it to the Spider Leader and keep his Nen from him? Heh, you might even have others with chains, who knows?"  
  
He could tell Kurapika was near to passing out from exhaustion (and hopefully not from blood loss) as his head kept nodding over. The guys he had fought must have been something else, Leorio thought as he worked. Couldn’t Kurapika heal himself with one of his chains when he was strong enough? What could have prevented him from—  
  
Kurapika’s cough caught his attention. "That's the only thing," the man said hoarsely.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Keeping me alive."  
  
Leorio stopped applying the bandages to Kurapika's wound. He scrunched his eyes closed, taking a slow, shuddering breath.  
  
"What?" He repeated, hoping that he misunderstood.  
  
"I don't want to be the last one, I don't want to live with that," Kurapika muttered, his eyes falling shut. "When I found all of them I was. I was going to bury myself with them. Me with my clan."  
  
Leorio’s hands moved on autopilot, continuing to look for cuts and scrapes.  He couldn’t feel them, his hands. The room felt too quiet. There was just his breathing (too loud in his ears) and Kurapika’s shallow breaths. He felt as though his chest had been scooped out, left with a clawing emptiness. It took him a moment to realize it was terror.  
  
"That's why I was always afraid. Of losing my anger, letting go of it. If I didn't have that I was… Empty. There was nothing left," Kurapika continued. He still sounded just as composed as he had been before.

Leorio sat back on his heels, no longer able to hold his hands steady enough to be much use. He…probably should have realized how Kurapika felt long before this. Hell, he’d felt similarly after losing Pietro.

_While acknowledging that administering a tool to determine suicide risk is only one aspect of the broader aspect of risk assessment, the Scale for Suicide Ideation (SSI) and the Nurses’ Global Assessment of Suicide Risk (NGASR) are two useful tools for the formal assessment of suicidal ideation and suicidal behavior. It is important to note that currently, no wide-scale-_

Leorio ran his hands roughly down his face, ignoring the sting in his eyes. He cursed his habit of committing parts of his textbooks to memory.  
"Kurapika," Leorio gritted out.  
  
"At least I have something to keep me going after I reach my goal. Make Lucilfer’s life a living hell," Kurapika mumbled, ignoring Leorio.  
  
"There's nothing else that's worth living for?"  
  
"No."  
  
Leorio took a long shaky breath. “Well, that settles that then,” he said. He let a silence fall over the two of them until Kurapika started to fidget.

“Settles what?” Kurapika asked, blearily cracking an eye open to look at Leorio.

Leorio took the opportunity to strike, flicking Kurapika repeatedly in the forehead. The man was too exhausted to be able to dodge.

“Leo- what stop, ow—” Kurapika protested, flinching at the assault.

“The second we get back from whatever hellscape we’re heading for, I am calling up Gon and Killua, and the three of us are going to knock some sense into you. You are getting the proper Doctor Paladiknight treatment. Non-stop fun and support, even if I have to beat it into you,” he said, giving Kurapika one more flick.

Kurapika looked up at Leorio’s eyes, expression utterly confused. “I don’t understand,” he whispered. Leorio sighed.

“You keep forgetting you have people that care about you, huh? Well guess what. You do. So don’t go throwing yourself into situations like this and getting the shit beat out of you, alright?”

“Oh,” Kurapika said, finally looking away from Leorio. He stared at the far wall as Leorio scrounged around in his bag for some coagulants and stitches. “I…I’ll try to remember, Leorio.”

He didn’t even flinch as Leorio began threading the needle through his skin. Leorio winced for him. “You better, or I’ll sic those two little heathens on you when we get off this damn boat.” The threat was empty, as he had no idea where either of the two teens were now.

Kurapika didn’t reply. He flicked his eyes up to the man’s face, and realized that Kurapika had finally passed out from exhaustion. Working quickly, Leorio finished stitching up the wound on Kurapika’s side. He leaned back and shakily sat down next to the sleeping man, cleaning his hands off absentmindedly on a spare rag he kept with him.

“Alright. Alright, get up, get moving Leorio. We still gotta get out of this mess,” he muttered to himself. And continued to sit there. He just felt so tired. Kurapika’s breath was slow and deep, and Leorio tried to match the tempo. Rubbing his eyes, Leorio reached for his radio. “This is Boar, I’ve located Rat. The two of us will be at the drop point in five minutes.”

“Got it, Boar,” a voice answered. He was fairly certain it was Tiger- or Kanzai.

Slowly, Leorio reached under Kurapika, shifting him into his arms. It barely took any effort to lift him, how much did he even weigh? First thing Leorio was going to do was force feed the man for a week straight, God.

“Alright, let’s get you out of here,” Leorio whispered, and took off down the hall towards the others. The sooner they got out of here, the sooner Kurapika could get some well deserved help.


End file.
